School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Beacon Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Beacon Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 238 put it first and 226 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in East Sussex actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

12

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

238 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Beacon Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Beacon Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for East Sussex as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across East Sussex, 24.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 632 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for East Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not East Sussex ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Beacon Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Beacon Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.85 per place 167 first choices 197 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 182 first choices 197 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 193 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 239 first choices 268 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 287 first choices 266 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 254 first choices 247 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 271 first choices 280 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 301 first choices 282 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 281 first choices 278 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 271 first choices 263 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 230 first choices 244 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 238 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Beacon Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Beacon Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 197 167 167 0.85
2016/17 197 182 181 0.92
2017/18 237 193 193 0.81
2018/19 268 239 239 0.89
2019/20 266 287 256 1.08
2020/21 247 254 235 1.03
2021/22 280 271 261 0.97
2022/23 282 301 276 1.07
2023/24 278 281 265 1.01
2024/25 263 271 258 1.03
2025/26 244 230 223 0.94
2026/27 255 238 226 0.93

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

398 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95%

226 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 255 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,550

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,341

86.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

209

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

500

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Beacon Academy has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Beacon Academy reported 209 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.5% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Beacon Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,809 places 1,562 on roll 2012/13 1,809 places 1,448 on roll 2013/14 1,800 places 1,403 on roll 2014/15 1,800 places 1,353 on roll 2015/16 1,800 places 1,287 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,242 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,258 on roll 2018/19 1,800 places 1,300 on roll 2020/21 1,809 places 1,449 on roll 2021/22 1,809 places 1,516 on roll 2022/23 2,050 places 1,584 on roll 2023/24 2,050 places 1,613 on roll 2024/25 2,050 places 1,651 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
East Sussex

Postcode TN6 2AS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137982).

Other contested secondary schools in East Sussex

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.